The costs to electric utility customers from short-term, limited geographic scale power disruptions have been studied for many years. However, there is increasing interest among regulators, policy-makers, and utilities in the economic consequences of interruptions that are of longer duration (days, weeks or longer) and of larger geographic scope (entire metropolitan areas or regions).
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity’s Transmission Permitting and Technical Assistance Division, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), convened a workshop to identify research needs and discuss potential avenues for methodological advances in the economics of widespread, long-duration power interruptions. The workshop was organized around six key themes in the economics of widespread, long-duration interruptions. Each theme was first introduced as a discussion paper written by leading experts in academia, industry, and the non-profit sector. The experts were tasked with assessing the state of knowledge on particular topics and identifying research needs. General topics included in the discussion paper and workshop include definitions of resilience and reliability; regional economic modeling approaches; uncertainty quantification; data challenges and opportunities; contingent valuation survey techniques; and reduced-form analytical tools for assessing the impacts of power interruptions of this scale.
